DANE COUNTY AREA GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY
Several subscription online databases which you can access without charge were mentioned at the 3 April 2008 DCAGS meeting. See more details below the DCAGS meeting schedule.
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Mailing Address: Dane County Area Genealogical Society PO Box 5652 Madison, WI 53705-0652 Society e-mail address: widcags@gmail.com Membership dues: $15.00/year individual or $20.00/year family ($5.00 discount if you get the newsletter only by e-mail) Membership year is 1 January-31 December Printable 2009 membership form (27 KB PDF file) |
Society Organizational Documents (PDF files) Plan of Merger (July 2006) Bylaws (August 2006) Policy and Procedures Manual (September 2006) 
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30 June 2009 - DCAGS (176 KB PDF file)
31 May 2009 - DCAGS (107 KB PDF file)
30 April 2009 - DCAGS (108 KB PDF file)
31 March 2009 - DCAGS (102 KB PDF file)
28 February 2009 - DCAGS (186 KB PDF file)
31 January 2009 - DCAGS (103 KB PDF file)
31 December 2008 - DCAGS (122 KB PDF file)
30 November 2008 - DCAGS (128 KB PDF file)
31 October 2008 - DCAGS (149 KB PDF file)
30 September 2008 - DCAGS (130 KB PDF file)
31 August 2008 - DCAGS (127 KB PDF file)
31 July 2008 - DCAGS (119 KB PDF file)
30 June 2008 - DCAGS (163 KB PDF file)
31 May 2008 - DCAGS (145 KB PDF file)
30 April 2008 - DCAGS (152 KB PDF file)
31 March 2008 - DCAGS (131 KB PDF file)
29 February 2008 - DCAGS (137 KB PDF file)
31 January 2008 - DCAGS (135 KB PDF file)
Can you identify any of these women? (photographs mentioned in the Jan.'08 DCAGS newsletter)
Click here for access to newsletters published prior to 2008.
Note: Many (but not all) of the URLs listed in recent newsletters are “hot links.” If you click on the URL, your browser should go directly to the web page being referenced. (You must be using either Adobe Acrobat Reader version 5 or some version of Adobe Reader for these hotlinks to work.)
President — Rollie Littlewood (2010)
Vice-President — Don Cole (2009)
Secretary — Gerry Schlecht (2010)
Treasurer — Walker Crawford (2009)
Immediate past president — Patricia L. Skubis
Standing Committee Chairs:
Membership — William “Bill” Baures
Public Relations — vacant
Program and Education — vacant
Newsletter — Ruth Simpson
Historian — Sandy Zart
Webmaster — Rollie Littlewood
For elected officers, the final year of their current term in listed after their name
The Governing Board usually meets on the third Monday of each month. Contact the society president to get the time and location.
| Meeting Date | Program Description |
|---|---|
| 7 May 2009 | Social Networking & Family Trees - Our speaker will be Pat Skubis, past-president of the Dane County Area Genealogical Society. There are about six websites currently providing social networking access for people engaged in genealogy. You may be wondering what “social networking” is and what you can do on these websites. You can connect with your family, swap stories and recipes, share family photos, or build collaborative family trees at these Family 2.0 family networking portals. Each site offers some different features. You can make them public or keep them private. They allow you to access your family tree records from any computer with internet access. They are a great tool to use if you are doing research away from home. Some are totally free and some charge a nominal fee. Pat will discuss the unique features of <MyHeritage.com>. This online service allows its members to create profiles and community sites in order to communicate with family and friends, and to research their heritage with advanced face recognition and search tools. With MyHeritage Research, your genealogy research becomes easier, because for the first time you can search multiple databases at one time and it will take you to the exact page that the information is on. The site also compares other family trees that have been submitted for what they call “Smart Matches” and notifies you so that you can compare the data. If they have indeed found a match you can contact the submitter through their service. People around the world are using this service. |
| 4 June 2009 | Emigration Patterns from Germany to Southeastern Wisconsin - Our speaker will be John Von Haden, a native of Hartford, Wisconsin, who has become quite well known for his genealogical research in Washington and Ozaukee counties of Wisconsin. His current specialty is reading/translating church records and civil records from Germany, France, and Luxemburg. When you see a tiny little church out in the country, the original farm owners surrounding it often came from within miles of each other in Germany. This presentation will use Washington county, Wisconsin, as an example to show some emigration patterns from Germany to Wisconsin in the 1840s and early 1850s. Families, related or not, often came together and sometimes even went to the land office on the same day so that they could be neighbors here. From a research perspective, you can sometimes use these patterns to help you find the elusive birthplace city of your Wisconsin ancestor. |
| 9 July 2009 (date changed, due to July 4th holiday) |
Picnic meeting at the Fitchburg Community Center; details to be posted later. |
| 6 August 2009 | Speaker and topic TBA |
| 3 September 2009 | Speaker and topic TBA |
| 10 October 2009 No “regular” meeting this month |
A Genealogy Fair is being planned |
| 5 November 2009 | Paper Publishing: Perhaps the Best Way to Share Your Work and Family Stories with Future Generations - Our speaker will be Jan Coombs. |
| 3 December 2009 | Speaker and topic TBA |
We’re proud to be an affiliate of the Wisconsin State Genealogical Society
DCAGS is a proud member of the Federation of Genealogical Societies
Four different categories of databases which normally have a subscription fee but which DCAGS members may be able to access free of charge were mentioned at the 3 April 2008 meeting. Notes about these databases will be “beefed up” in the future, but here are some essential facts which may get you going.
Searchable newspapers:
<newspaperarchive.com> has many older newspapers available with full page images and searchable text. There are about 900 different Wisconsin newspapers available on this service (with different coverage time spans).
Access method # 1: go to <www.badgerlink.net>, then click on “Newspaperarchive”. This works if you are using a computer connected to a local or regional ISP; it may NOT work if you are connected to certain “national” ISPs, such as <aol.com> or <msn.com>.
Access method # 2: go to <www.scls.lib.wi.us/cgi-bin/auth.cgi?connectto=EHNEW>, then enter your library card number and click on the “Log In” button. This works from any computer if you have a valid library card in any of the sixty or so libraries in the seven county area served by the South Central Library System
Note that <newspaperarchive.com>and <newspaperarchives.com> are two different subscription services.
Gale databases:
Gale, a very large firm which has been providing research databases to the academic and library communities for several decades, is offering free access to many of their products at libraries during National Library Week, 13-19 April 2008.
American Civil War (or The War of Northern Aggression, if you prefer) records:
The Alexander Street Press is providing free access to three of their Civil War databases (all part of The American Civil War Online) and two streaming music databases (all part of Music Online)) for the entire month of April.
Swedish records:
Genline, a service which provides access to many original Swedish records, is now available at the local Family History Center.
Announcements of special interest to society members:
There will be tours of Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison given on the first and last Sundays of October. The tours on 5 October 2008 will be sponsored by the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Foundation; the tours on 26 October will be sponsored by Historic Madison Inc., of Wisconsin. Check BIGWILL’s Upcoming events of regional interest (in Wisconsin, Illinois & nearby portions of neighboring states) web page, where more details will be listed as they are announced – search for either the dates involved or the words “forest hill.”
The Wisconsin State Genealogical Society is sponsoring its 2009 Gene-A-Rama conference on 3-4 April 2009 in Middleton. The featured speaker will be Christine Rose, CGSM, CGLSM, FASG. Other speakers will include James L. Hansen, FASG; David McDonald, CGSM; Nancy Emmert, CGSM; and George Findlen, CGSM. Periodically visit the WSGS website for further information as the plans develop for this conference.
Sally Jacobs, a local archivist who operates Jacobs Archival Services in Madison, has informed us that she has started a blog called “The Practical Archivist.” She describes it as “chock full of archiving tips and geeky tidbits for genealogists and keepers of the family photo album – giving away some of my best photo archiving tips at no charge.”
Each spring and fall the Library-Archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society sponsors a series of genealogy classes; these usually meet on Saturday mornings in either the WHS Library in Madison or in the nearby Memorial Library. See Library-Archives Classes and Workshops for more detailed information. The seven classes being offered in the fall of 2008 are “Ancestry.com” (13 September [repeated on 6 December], Lori Bessler)( The 13 September class is FULL), “From Daguerreotype to Digital File: Organizing and Caring for Family and Personal Photographs” (27 September [repeated on 8 November], David Benjamin), “Oh Darned! Where Did I Put Uncle George? Organizing and Compiling Your Research” (18 October, Rick Pifer), “Immigration and Naturalization Records” (1 November, Dee Grimsrud), “From Daguerreotype to Digital File: Organizing and Caring for Family and Personal Photographs” (8 November, David Benjamin), “Digital Retouching Demystified” (22 November, Andy Kraushaar) ( FULL), and “Ancestry.com” (6 December, Lori Bessler). Click on the title of any class for further details (time, fees, location, class coverage) about that class. A discount on the registration fee is offered to those who are members of either the Wisconsin Historical Society or the Wisconsin State Genealogical Society. Registration began 1 August 2008; to register, download, print, and mail or FAX the required registration form.
Are you a beginner at genealogy? Would you like to explore some (free) online guides to getting started in genealogy? Here’s one to try: Indexes to the RootsWeb Guides to Tracing Family Trees
Some other genealogical links of special interest:
- Wisconsin GenWeb site
23 June 2008
- Columbia County GenWeb site
25 March 2007
- Dane County GenWeb site
- Rock County GenWeb site
- Sauk County GenWeb site
23 June 2008
- List of all the Wisconsin county GenWeb sites (many Wisconsin County GenWeb sites changed their URLs in early 2008)
23 June 2008
- Guide to Wisconsin-oriented email discussion lists, especially those at the level of individual counties
(these lists facilitate correspondence and exchange of research suggestions with other genealogists interested in the same area)
- Wisconsin Historical Society
(see especially the links to Library & Archives and to Genealogy)
- Dane County Historical Society
17 December 2008
The DCHS maintains a collection of published and unpublished archival materials relating to Dane County at the Lussier Family Heritage Center. They offer research help, answering genealogical and other research or reference inquiries from the public; see the DCHS website for further information. - University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives and Records Management Services
25 February 2009
(see especially the web pages for genealogical resources and for oral history). - Ancestry Library Edition
9 March 2008
This is not a web site which can be accessed from your home, but it can be used from any of the six computers in the Reading Room of the WHS library labeled “Reserved for Genealogical and Federal Document Research ONLY”. Ancestry Library Edition replaces AncestryPlus; it offers most of the databases available with individual subscriptions to <ancestry.com>; it does not include the following collections: Family & Local Histories, Historical Newspapers, OneWorldTree, Filby’s Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, Biography & Genealogy Master Index (BGMI), PERiodical Source Index (PERSI), and Freedman’s Bank Records. Additionally all “personalized features” normally available when using <ancestry.com>, such as surname alerts, are unavailable when using Ancestry Library Edition. For several years, most of the databases available with paid personal subscriptions to <ancestry.com> have been available free of charge at most Family History Centers. This changed in April of 2007; now only about thirty-seven of the databases offered by <ancestry.com> are available on the computers at most Family History Centers. A list of these remaining databases can be seen at <www.ancestry.com/fhc/dblist.aspx>; note that most of these databases include just the indexes – only the three included U.S. census databases include the actual data images. Several other subscription genealogy database services have moved to fill the void left by the nearly complete loss of Ancestry databases at Family History Centers; World Vital Records, Godfrey Memorial Library, Footnote.com, HeritageQuest Online, and Kindred Konnections have all announced that their databases will soon be available at suitably-equipped FHCs, including the one in Madison. Click here for further information on this development. - HeritageQuest Online Index
3 March 2008
This website can be accessed from any of the six computers in the Reading Room of the WHS library labeled “Reserved for Genealogical and Federal Document Research ONLY,” but there is also a high likelihood that it can be accessed from your home (or any other location from which you access the world wide web) for little or no extra cost. Many libraries are making this subscription service available to their members – for instance, most of the fifty-two public libraries in Adams, Columbia, Dane, Green, Portage, Sauk and Wood Counties which belong to the South Central Library System.The URL to start with for SCLS access is <http://www.scls.lib.wi.us/cgi-bin/auth.cgi?connectto=HQ>; you must provide your library card number each time you use this service.
It can be used to search a head-of-household index for most years of the US federal census (currently there are indexes available for twelve years, but only five states have been indexed for the 1930 census). It can be used to browse the images for all years of the US federal census from 1790 through 1930. It can be used to do full-text searches of more than 20,000 (slated to grow to more than 25,000) genealogy and local history publications, and to display images of any individual page in any one of these publications. This resource is now generally the favored access point to PERSI (the Periodical Source Index, from the Allen County Public Library); note that as of March 2008, due to unusual circumstances PERSI indexing is running about a year and a half behind on HeritageQuest Online. - Research Help documents from the Family History Library
This link takes one to a list of a portion of the available Research Help documents which includes those specifically for Wisconsin. By using various sort-order and starting-letter menus on this website, you can get access to virtually all of the Research Help documents published by the FHL. All of these Research Helps are available as a web page or a series of web pages; most are available as [free] downloadable PDF files; some can be ordered as printed documents which will be mailed to you [for a small fee] by the Family History Library. - MadCat (catalog of the Univ.of Wisconsin-Madison libraries, including the computerized portion of the library of the Wisconsin Historical Society)
- ArCat (computerized portion of the catalog of the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society)
- WorldCat (a combined [“union”] catalog database from about 9,000 libraries in the USA [including about 500 in Wisconsin] and forty-four other countries; sometimes referred to as “OCLC” [the corporate sponsor] or “FirstSearch” [the search program itself]).
7 June 2007
This service will help you get publication data for books and other library material which may not be available in your regular library. it will usually NOT tell you for sure if an item can be obtained via InterLibrary Loan, because it does not normally reveal the lending policies of the libraries which hold an item. Individuals who hold library cards in any of the 52 public libraries in Adams, Columbia, Dane, Green, Portage, Sauk and Wood Counties which belong to the South Central Library System can access WorldCat from any computer with Internet access. The URL to start with for SCLS access is <http://www.scls.lib.wi.us/cgi-bin/auth.cgi?connectto=WC>; you must provide your library card number each time you use this service. - Great Lakes Regional Facility (Chicago), National Archives and Records Administration
9 August 2008
(see especially the link to the Archival Holdings Guide for the Great Lakes Region)
- National Personnel Records Center, Military Personnel Records
10 August 2008
- Directory of Wisconsin Libraries 11 June 2007
- Public library systems of Wisconsin (map)
- South Central Library System (encompassing 61 libraries in Adams, Columbia, Dane, Green, Portage, Sauk and Wood Counties)
10 December 2006
(see especially the links to Databases and to connecting to LINKcat--a shared online catalog for 46 of the libraries in the system)
- Information about obituaries published in the Wisconsin State Journal;
use the subject search tool in the local newspapers portion of LinkCat to search the index of obituaries published between 1960 and “a few days ago” 7 June 2008
- Arrowhead Library System (encompassing seven libraries in Rock County)
- Milwaukee County Federated Library System (includes fourteen branches of the Milwaukee Public Library and fourteen other city libraries).
26 June 2007
(see especially the Milwaukee Public Library (MPL) and the summary of genealogically-significant records housed at its central branch)
- WISCAT On-Line Catalog (a union catalog for more than 1200 libraries of all types throughout Wisconsin; now includes a connection to BadgerLink)
5 May 2007
- Allen County Public Library (Fort Wayne, Indiana) 23 March 2007
The extensive renovation/expansion which you probably heard about has been completed; reports about the new facility have been glowing. Click here to access their online catalog. - Brigham Young University’s Family History Archives search engine
29 February 2008
BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library, the Family History Library, and the Allen County Public Library are working together on a project to eventually digitize over 100,000 out-of-copyright family histories and thousands of local histories. The collections will have every-word search capability; search results are linked to digital (PDF) images of the original publication. A good beginning has been made, but be forewarned that searches can be very time-consuming. Search hits lead to individual pages, but the actual hits are not highlighted on the page. - Information about federal censuses, as provided by IPUMS-USA: Questions, 1850-2000 and Enumerator instructions, 1850-1950 (censuses after 1950 were mostly conducted by self-enumeration)
5 May 2007
- Wisconsin Veterans Museum Research Center 2 April 2008
(see especially the link to “Resources,” including the Wisconsin Veterans Memorials Catalog)
- State of Wisconsin Blue Book (complete text of every Blue Book issued since 1995, plus selected feature articles dating back to 1983; search capability is included)
- Family History Center – click here to learn about databases available at the Madison Family History Center (in addition to those created by the Family History Library)
5 April 2008
- Do you want to check out the experimental databases available at FamilySearch Labs? Click here to see what’s currently online. Note that some of these databases are searchable, while others are only browsable.
26 July 2008
- Max Kade Institute (resources for research in German genealogy)
4 May 2007
See especially the web page on genealogical resources, including a listing of the genealogical holdings in their library. (Beware: this website uses “frames” technology.)
- Norwegian-American Genealogical Center & Naeseth Library (formerly known as the Vesterheim Genealogical Center & Naeseth Library; resources for research in Norwegian and Norwegian-American genealogy)
4 May 2007
Handouts available at the May 2007 DCAGS meeting included a listing of the data collections the NAGCNL holds and a research questionnaire one should fill out when requesting that the NAGCNL do research for you.
- Wisconsin Vital Records Office – click here to learn about vital records indexes available in this office
10 August 2008
- Dane County Register of Deeds Office
- Forest Hill Cemetery (Madison) This website now provides the ability to search burial records by name or lot number (a spot check iindicated that burials are listed within three weeks of their occurrence)
7 June 2008
- Upcoming genealogical events in the region (Wisconsin & surrounding states)
- Family History Center – click here to learn about databases available at the Madison Family History Center (in addition to those created by the Family History Library)
The Dane County Genealogical Society (formerly known as the South Central Chapter of the Wisconsin State Genealogical Society)
and the Computer Assisted Genealogists of Southern Wisconsin (formerly known as the South Central Wisconsin PAF Users Group)
merged in September of 2006 to form the Dane County Area Genealogical Society
There have been
Note: This home page can now be reached by entering just “dcags.org” into the location or address field of most browsers.
(The “official” URL of “http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~widcags/” still works as well.)
This site is maintained by Rollie Littlewood
Copyright © 2001-2009 by Dane County Area Genealogical Society. All rights reserved.
This site may be freely linked to but not duplicated in any fashion without our consent.
This page was last modified on 2 July 2009
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